Pakistan denies involvement in deadly 2009 attack on CIA base

Reuters Staff

2 Min Read

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pakistan on Friday dismissed as preposterous reports that its intelligence agency helped fund a 2009 suicide bombing on a CIA outpost in Afghanistan that was one of the deadliest attacks in the U.S. spy agency's history.

A heavily redacted U.S. government document, released under the Freedom of Information Act, said that an unidentified officer of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate paid $200,000 to the Haqqani network to facilitate the bombing.

The attack, at a site known as Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan, killed seven and wounded six.

"Allegations in the media on Pakistan’s involvement with HQN are preposterous," a Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in a statement, using an acronym for the Haqqani network, which the United States has designated as a terrorist organization.

"In fact, we were shocked and deeply saddened when precious American lives were lost at the Chapman facility in 2009 in an unfortunate attack that was later claimed by TTP in a publicly available video, featuring the suicide bomber with the leader of the TTP," the statement said.

The TTP, or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, is the main Pakistani Taliban faction.

"Pakistan is determined to eradicate the scourge of terrorism and has taken action against all terrorist elements, without discrimination," the statement said.

(The declassified U.S. government document, obtained by the National Security Archive, a non-governmental research institute at George Washington University, can be found here here)

Reporting by Warren Strobel and David Alexander; Editing by Toni Reinhold